


The Best Stories Are Told In Flesh And Words

by FunkyinFishnet



Category: Spartacus Series (TV)
Genre: Canon Gay Relationship, Character Study, Choices, Falling In Love, Freedom, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Male Slash, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-11
Updated: 2012-05-11
Packaged: 2017-11-05 04:17:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/402350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FunkyinFishnet/pseuds/FunkyinFishnet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nasir used to believe in the power of words. Then he learned that the stories his body told would give him so much more. Meeting Spartacus and loving Agron shows him a new path - the power of combining both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best Stories Are Told In Flesh And Words

Nasir was tiny when he first learned the power of words.

 

He used to love hearing stories. In the training house, some tutors kept the young ones quiet and behaving well with words rather than harsh hands. Nasir could remember every tale, even now.

 

Far off lands. Brave men and women. Terrifying gods. Love and lust and danger. Impossible exploits.

 

When he first heard the stories, they breathed fire into his heart and mind and he imagined having his own adventures one day. He would strive to great wonderful heights. He would conquer the impossible. As he grew older and understood what place he had in the world, he discovered that those words had been lies. His world was not limitless. Instead it was small, hard, and controlled. Words could never change that.

 

Soon, he was taught to tell stories with his body - to become what was desired, to be a dominus’s hands and feet. When he proved to have skill, his world became bigger. These stories were more powerful than words. They gave him what words could not.

 

Nasir became Tiberius, body slave to a dominus who gave him power and expected him to use it well. Nasir wielded it expertly. He received prestige for his actions. He became known to other nobles. He was appreciated and praised and his world became more expansive and comfortable than most slaves dreamed of.

 

His dreams were different. At night, stories roamed his mind. Snakes in fine clothing. Love burning through impossibilities. Strong good men laying waste to those that held them down.

 

He believed such things were possible only in dreams now.

 

*

 

The only time he remembered the power in words was also the only night he saw Chadara unsure. She was yet to become exclusively the dominus’s body slave and so was passed to his guests to enjoy. Sent to retrieve more of his master’s favourite wine, Nasir found her hiding amongst the casks, shaking but not crying. Chadara never cried.

 

She extended a trembling wrist and Nasir saw her raw skin. One of the guests had taken her near burning oil and hadn’t stopped when she’d been damaged. Chadara had left him quickly, before he was ready for her to depart his company. She hissed at Nasir with pained voice that surely she would be thrown back to the slavers now or maybe even worse.

 

Nasir took her quickly to the kitchen, to the slave there who knew healing. He sat with her as she was treated, their sides pressed together. He told her that the dominus’s eye was often on her, that the dominus talked of how he enjoyed her. She would become his in quick time.

 

The pain of healing was great enough to make Chadara whimper so Nasir threw his mind back to what had once comforted him and spoke stories to her quietly as distraction. He told her of fair women who conquered gods, of cunning huntresses and their half-man prey, of trees that whispered secrets and guided the brave.

 

By the time he had finished, Chadara was shaking no longer.

 

*

 

The stories did not emerge again. They slept under his skin, as Nasir did behind Tiberius. Chadara never spoke of them, nor of what happened to her that night. The burn was covered by cloth and by jewellery until it faded and she soon became the dominus’s favourite, beside Nasir.

 

Together they lived well by being obedient, tending to their dominus's every need, telling stories with their bodies that pleased him.

 

These were the only stories that mattered.

 

*

 

Spartacus was a story. He was a warning to slaves. All who helped him would perish. Any who brought him down would be rewarded. He was not to be admired. His story was dangerous. Nasir heard other slaves talk of the Thracian. Some wished Spartacus would set them free too. Nasir was not of like mind.

 

He had a valuable safe life in a collar. And he would fight for it to stay that way.

 

When Spartacus and his men pillaged the villa, Nasir felt despair in his guts. Spartacus’s fine speech did nothing. Freedom was just another word without power. It brought only destruction for slaves. Nasir had liked his life before Spartacus’s freedom was part of it.

 

With his freedom, he chose to end Spartacus’s story, and regain his own.

 

But Spartacus stayed his hand and spoke new words – of Nasir choosing his own path and purpose. And he did not treat them as a dominus would. He did not kill Nasir. Instead he imparted lessons without expectation. Nasir’s world was widening again.

 

Spartacus taught them more new words and new ways to use their bodies – the power of a sword in hand used well. His story was not a fantasy, imagined only in dreams. The walls of Roman rule could be overcome. The rebels could burn through the impossible. Nasir saw it happen with his own eyes.

 

He began to dream bigger once more.

 

*

 

Then a German spoke of brothers and Nasir felt a new story begin. He was used to skin heating and heart quickening in the company of one he admired. But the only flesh he had been allowed to touch before was his dominus or who his dominus chose. To be allowed his own choice was new and unnerving. Chadara encouraged with laughter and teasing. She was writing her own story but with old words. It was not what Nasir desired.

 

Spartacus's words and hands had torn away collar, but it was Agron who appeared in Nasir's dreams.

 

Love and lust and adventures. Nasir had learned long ago that such things were not his to have. Only now they could be. He did not know how to begin such a story. He drank his fill of Agron's presence and watched him. The German often looked back.

 

Nasir learned that freedom was choice. He chose to tell truth to Crixus and to go to the mines where he could be of help. He did not regret that, even when a wound took him into agonised dreams. They seemed to last forever. He saw his brother there. He coughed and reached, then the pain seemingly brought him out into candles and darkness.

 

He did not believe he was truly awake when he staggered into the next room and Agron kissed him.

 

Kisses in stories heralded ruin and fire and awakening. Nasir felt heat ignite him at Agron’s gentle touch. Agron’s expression held only truth and longing. Nasir looked back in wonder. So this was how this story began.

 

*

 

It took time for him to grow used to it all; the desire and honesty of care that Agron poured out on him and being allowed to express his feelings in return. He had never known such riches. He quickly began to crave those times between them, basking in the German’s touch and feverishly adding his own marks to Agron’s skin. He was struck anew by wonder each time Agron touched him, and the awe and desire he saw in Agron’s eyes left him smiling and reaching for more. Agron was learning a new story too.

 

Nasir held onto him tight. He had something new to fight for.

 

He still believed freedom was dangerous. It was being allowed to love and act on it. It was sword in hand. It was an empty broken temple and Gauls and Germans huddled together. It was mourning Chadara and Lucius and seeing Naevia and Crixus struggle to mend.

 

It was kissing and touching and two bodies sweating together and sleeping entangled. It was addictive.

 

His dreams were still filled with childhood stories. But what he now found waiting for him when he woke was greater – friends, and the tenderness and love of Agron, gifts that he returned with brimming heart. He was conquering the impossible. He pulled Agron closer still. His very own adventure.

 

“What do you think of, little man?”

 

The hot breath in his ear made him shudder and slide a hand between Agron’s legs. Nasir could be greedy now too.

 

“Dreams,” he replied in a low voice, enjoying the hitch in Agron’s breathing. “Of what fills my heart.”

 

Nasir believed once more in the power of words. But he also knew the power in flesh was equal to it. He'd seen what both could do. Now he shared their power with another.

 

Now he painted stories on Agron's skin.

 

_-the end_


End file.
